On June 2nd Nicola Sturgeon revealed plans to multiply by a factor of almost 5 the amount of public money being spent on preparing trainee teachers for the Catholic Teaching Certificate (CTC), a requirement for teaching in Catholic schools but for no other purpose. Although the absolute sums involved are not large, this is public money, raised through taxation levied on a population of which now only one in eight is Catholic, while the majority has no religious affiliation whatsoever. This investment is particularly troubling in the context...

Photo: Mark Condren In the celebration of today’s results, the Scottish Secular Society congratulates Ireland on today’s result after an incredible campaign for repeal, and hope it heralds a more compassionate healthcare system for Irish women. As the bishops and other reactionaries repeated apocalyptic ramblings of “murdered babies” and social collapse, the Irish people have turned their sympathies towards those who should not have needed to have fought for such a choice. Since the 40s the Catholic Church in Ireland has used...

This week saw the publication of figures concerning the religiosity of Europe’s young people. These figures published in a report prepared by Stephen Bullivant for the European Council of [Catholic] Bishops are based on data from the European Social Survey 2014-16 and show that in the UK a majority of the adult population, and 70% of young people (16-29), identify as having no religion. These figures show the privileged place of religion in our system of government to be grossly out of step with the views of the governed. Currently the...

The Scottish Secular Society welcomes the news that the SNP’s governing body are moving to debate the long overdue repeal of Scotland’s blasphemy laws. We fully support any move to more formally entrench freedom of expression as it is laid out in Article 19 of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, and hope this action gains cross party support. We would support Scotland joining England, Wales and many other countries across the world in removing blasphemy laws from the books. We also agree that such action...

Below is the letter drafted by our human rights adviser John Duncan in response to the unveiling of the Scottish Declaration on Human Rights. In response to this letter we were given information on how to sign up and can now proudly say we are signatories to the Scottish Declaration. You can find information on how to sign up either personally or on behalf of your organisation here: https://humanrightsdeclaration.scot/sign-up Any organisation from the public, private or third sectors can sign their support for the Declaration. Big or small,...

Kevin McKenna was correct in arguing that having denominational schools are not a right of religions; he was wrong in arguing that we should seek to establish more faith schools in Scotland to compensate for the over-provision of Catholic schools. Love, compassion and human dignity are not the exclusive preserve of religions and do not require the provision of faith schools for young people to learn them. These are obvious components of an inclusive and civilised society. The Scotland of 2018 is not the Scotland of 1918. Religious affiliation...

As a secular organisation, and active campaigners for improved equality and ever-better human rights policies and practices, we see it our duty to learn how to listen across these invisible lines that divide our identities. And we try to help those citizens who come to us, learn how to communicate their own needs.